During a discussion between the composer and musicologist Katarzyna Naliwajek-Mazurek about his harpsichord music, Szymański said he "acquainted myself with harpsichords very early, at fourteen or fifteen while attending music school. I was very close with Władysław Kłowsiewicz [now a renowned virtuoso], who had just started to learn harpsichord. I used to play the recorder and we played together, so the texture and sound qualities and some articulation tricks were very familiar. I've been really interested to write for harpsichord from time to time, first for the Limericks for violin and harpsichord."
Naliwajek-Mazurek finds the harpsichord "very inherent" in Szymański's musical language, which "has been the case over the decades." She states that in Szymański "both sides of the harpsichord are present [the historical and the contemporary] – it's the most ideally equilibriated vision of harpsichord in today's music." She specifies the historical side "that goes towards tradition yet is rejuvenated and written anew, not a replication but a fresh invention. Then there is his entirely new way of imagining harpsichord, construing its contemporary presence and personality as in Partita III. It's amazing how the instrument is treated from the point of view of timbre, with the harpsichord sonorities striking and beautiful – a completely new quality in so many aspects."